Of the three books by young women writers under review
here, Anne Haverty’s debut novel is far and
away the best of the bunch. It concerns a man living
in the shadow of his more kindly and well-adjusted
brother, his romantic attachment to that brother’s
wife, and the feelings, which he shares with this
woman, for a mutant sheep, a mutual interest which
helps to bring them together and cement their relationship.
Clever young historian Martin Hawkins throws over
his promising career at Trinity College and returns
to the family sheep farm in Tipperary to brood on
his own past instead, most notably the deaths of his
parents and his failed romances. At odds with his
conscientious brother Pierce, and with the country
folk who are more worldly-wise than he is, and perceive
him as a shiftless soul with his head in the clouds
who has deserted his own calling, he is also furtively
in love with Pierce’s restive wife, Etti, and
harbours strange convictions about the genetically
engineered lamb he calls Missy.

Missy is one of a flock that has been
‘improved’ with human genes. Pitiful, infinitely
touching, surely unsheep-like, maybe even half-human,
Missy figures significantly in Martin’s imagination.
When Etti too comes to regard Missy with the same tenderness
and empathy, she and Martin embark on a reckless and
terrible adventure, which involves a doomed attempt
to deliver Missy to Brigitte Bardot’s animal sanctuary
in Provence, where they think she will be properly looked
after. But will the adulterated animal that is Missy
find a place in the affections of the former sex-kitten,
given her jaundiced view of humanity?
If this all sounds ridiculously far-fetched, it is,
but such is Haverty’s skill that she manages to
make the most strange and surreal of situations seem
almost normal and quotidian. (A few years ago this modus
operandi was termed ‘magic realism’,
and was much favoured by Eastern European and South
American writers.) Despite the apparently whimsical
storyline, all the big themes are present here: love,
hate, betrayal; death, bereavement, grief. The nature/culture
opposition that is united in Missy is a metamorphosis
as worthy of Ovid as it is of Kafka, with a dash of
science fiction (or, indeed, science fact) thrown in
for good measure. Haverty is also to be congratulated
on pulling off the difficult imaginative feat of writing
this first-person narrative in the voice of a male character,
making it believable, and exploring the motivations
towards misogyny without being judgmental or prescriptive.
The evocation of rural life, both Irish and French,
is brilliant, with moments of great beauty and passages
of deep despair, and there is a subtle humour that cuts
through the tragic pull of the story, placing it in
the best Irish tragicomic tradition. The only other
young Irish writer I can think of capable of such inventive
accomplishments is Mike McCormick, whose first collection
of short stories, Getting It In The Head, published
last year, should be on everybody’s reading list.
In a world of fakes, Anne Haverty is the real thing:
a writer who can write, with a faultless style that
matches a thought-provoking story. Her next move will
be watched, by me at least, with the keenest attention.